ABB is named Frost & Sullivan’s 2017 Company of the Year thanks to its visionary innovation embodied by its distributed control system (DCS) offering and its impact on customer performance. The award recognises ABB’s digital leadership, not only when compared to other industrial automation suppliers, it was said, but also against non-industry peers. The award highlights how ABB meets customer needs for improved performance in tough market conditions, at a time when process and power industries’ production assets have never been larger or more complex.
Frost & Sullivan states that ABB’s penetration and expansion in emerging markets have helped it dominate the DCS market with a 20.5 per cent market share in 2016.
“With our installed base of over 70 million connected devices and 70,000 control systems, and an annual investment of $1.5 billion in research and development, ABB is leading the digital transformation taking place across all process industries,” said Bernhard Eschermann, technology manager of ABB’s Industrial Automation division. “We are uniquely positioned to create additional customer value by sharing best practices across industries while tailoring solutions to specific end-user needs. By partnering with ABB, customers have access to decades of proven, digital solutions which will help them achieve unprecedented improvement in productivity and performance.”
Frost & Sullivan’s market research analysts attribute ABB’s success to its alignment with market Mega Trends and developing industry-specific DCS solutions to address the demands of different end-user market segments, thereby enabling them to create new opportunities and values for its customers. This, the analysts said, has helped ABB stay ahead of competition and retain a leadership position in the DCS market.
The report also praises ABB Ability Collaborative Operations Centres for helping customers improve performance. This is achieved by connecting them instantly, 24/7, to ABB experts who use remote diagnostics and analytics to solve problems before they become failures.
Likewise, ABB’s lifecycle service policy which maximizes the life of a customer’s investment, and its one-of-a-kind third-party Value Provider Program with channel partners located near end-users to provide a superior experience, are applauded.
The award recognises that, faster than many other automation vendors, ABB embraced the need to invest in start-ups as a way to foster innovation and scale up digital offerings quickly. The partnership with ABB and Microsoft, announced October 2016, is also identified by Frost & Sullivan as another way the company is nurturing a broader ecosystem of applications to drive digital excellence.
